As a kid growing up in Colorado, I loved watching the animated series The Super Friends, who fought against evil and for good as a part of the Justice League. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and more. They were opposed by the Legion of Doom and its cast of villains, always fighting for wrong over right.  

Colorado has its own Legion of Doom under our Gold Dome in Denver, and you need look no further than how they have wielded their legislative superpowers to know who leads them. In the DC universe, it is Lex Luther and Sinestro. In the General Assembly, it is Democratic state Sens. Mike Weissman and Julie Gonzales. 

No single individual in Colorado has done more to put convicted murderers back into our communities than Weissman, of Aurora, who represents Senate District 28. Over a period of years, both as a member of the state House and Senate, Weissman has methodically and relentlessly worked to return Colorado to the failed 1970s-style policies that make the sentence for murder 20 years, and then the killers go free. 

Beginning in 2019, then-Rep. Weissman sponsored legislation to make felony murder a parole-eligible crime. Felony murder occurs when a criminal chooses to engage in a specific type of felony that carries an extremely high risk of death, like aggravated (armed) robbery. Prior to Weissman’s “killers need hugs too” legislation, conviction at trial for such a crime would be punished with a life sentence. No more. Now, armed robbers — even repeated armed robbers who kill one, two or more innocent victims — will go to prison with the hope that Colorado’s deliberately broken and opaque sentencing scheme will provide a path back into our neighborhoods. 

This year, Weissman seeks to make extreme-indifference murder a parole-eligible offense. Extreme-indifference murder is also known as “depraved heart murder.” It is the kind of murder committed by the evil gunman at the Aurora Theater massacre and Club Q in El Paso County. It is a murder committed by someone who engages in conduct that creates “a grave risk of death”— practically certain — and results in the death of another person. Someone who shoots into a home they know is occupied and kills someone inside — that is the “extreme indifference to the value of human life” that under current law results in life in prison. Weissman wants those killers to be released into our neighborhoods. 

Here’s how Weissman’s arbitrary, forgiving bill works: a 20-year-old gangbanger drives by the wrong home and sprays it with bullets. If he kills your daughter one day before her 13th birthday, he could get life in prison. One day after that same birthday, he can be paroled. If the shooter murders your 13-year-old and maims/cripples your spouse and another child — maybe he gets a life sentence. But if he only murders your 13-year-old and maims/cripples only your spouse — he has the “hope” of being paroled.  

But there’s more. Weissman has a separate bill to allow those same murderers (and all other inmates serving parole-eligible sentences) to seek a “re-sentencing” after serving a mere 20 years. Even if that 20-year-old receives a sentence of 100 years for their evil acts, Weissman’s bill would allow them — only 20 years after their depraved heart murder — to ask a judge who likely has never heard the case, to give the killer a new and much shorter sentence.  

Weissman ensures that there is no hope for the victims that the killer’s sentence will be final. There is only hope for the murderers that they will again be free. 

Weissman has partnered up many times on legislation designed to favor criminals over victims with his colleague, Senadora (as her press releases refer to her) Julie Gonzales. 

At a time when affordability, jobs and health care are on top of Coloradans’ minds, Gonzales’ legislative focus seems better suited for Los Angeles than our Centennial State. She wants convicted felons back on our streets. Consider just a sample of bills Gonzales has sponsored. 

In 2019, she authorized DOC to push more convicted felons out of prison by raising the vacancy rate, triggering such efforts from 2% to 3%. The following year, her bill reduced the punishment for felons running away from a halfway house, work release or even intensive supervision parole. 

The year 2024 was bittersweet for Gonzales. Her bill to shorten potential sentences for rapists and other sex offenders and to allow them to do mandated sex offender treatment — from the comfort of our communities — failed. But she was able to tackle Colorado’s fourth-worst-in-the-nation recidivism rate — by passing a law to redefine “recidivism.” Polis signed it. Imagine the good we could do if we would redefine “homelessness,” “cancer,” or what a “win” means in Major League Baseball. 

Last year, Gonzales (and Rep. Chad Clifford, D-Greenwood Village) unsuccessfully tried to change the law to create a presumption that those convicted of certain felonies would be paroled as soon as they hit their parole eligibility dates — after serving a mere one third of their earned sentences. 

But this year, well, if you thought running for the U.S. Senate would slow down this public safety wrecking ball, you may have had too many of your kids’ petty offense-level gummies. This year, Gonzales and Weissman are sponsoring a bill that increases the “earned time” — which prisoners are given to shorten their time behind bars — to 14 days per month, or nearly half a month. If an inmate commits a felony while in prison, the earned time is shortened by only two days, to 12 days per month. 

Also this year, Gonzales wants more bureaucrats making controversial decisions about releasing heinous criminals.  

Currently, the governor must personally decide whether to grant early parole to some of our worst, young adult offenders (18-20 year olds). That means he can be held accountable by the voters who live in the communities in which these violent offenders are released.  

To make it easier for dangerous adult offenders to receive early parole, Gonzales is sponsoring a bill to remove the governor from the decision-making process. Instead, Gonzales wants a parole board that is nearly anonymous and unaccountable to Colorado voters to decide. If you have loved what the parole board has done with our current convicted and incarcerated criminals, this bill is for you. 

In 2020, Gonzales sought to eliminate the statutory prohibition on housing youthful offenders with adult offenders to allow for “mentoring.” It failed. But — and this is a prime example of the relentlessness of the Left in pushing their extreme legislative agenda — it became law the following year. In 2021, Gonzales changed the law to permit Colorado’s children to double the amount of marijuana they can possess and still only face a petty offense. The next year, she spearheaded a law to prevent juvenile offenders from having to pay restitution to the insurance companies who covered the cost of their criminal conduct. That means this bill—signed by Polis—passes along the cost of juvenile crimes to all  of us. 

If Weissman is the murderer’s BFF, Gonzales is the santo patrón of criminal illegal aliens. She has used every legislative session to make it harder to enforce both federal immigration laws and our own state laws. 

In her first session, Gonzales helped reduce the maximum sentences for all misdemeanors to 364 days, one day short of a year. While domestic violence assaults, child abuse, theft, etc., used to be punished with a meaningful one or two years in jail, that potential sentence could trigger deportation proceedings — and Colorado needs its criminal aliens. So, Gonzales reduced the sentences for all misdemeanors. 

In 2021, she sponsored the law that blocked state agencies and employees from sharing information for the “purpose of investigating for, participating in, cooperating with, or assisting in federal immigration enforcement,” at the risk of a $50,000 fine. 

That same year, the wannabe U.S. senator created an Orwellian law that changed the term “illegal alien” to “worker without authorization.” She redefined the term again as “New Americans” for purposes of eligibility for the Office of New Americans she helped launch. Ironically, this new office for “workers without authorization” is housed within the Department of Labor and Employment. 

Gonzales led the 2023 change in law that prohibits county-funded, elected sheriffs from contracting with ICE to use their locally owned and operated jail to house illegal aliens. The next year, she teamed up with terrorist-loving former state Rep. Tim Hernandez, D-Denver, to repeal nearly every existing requirement for issuing a Colorado driver’s license to a “person experiencing citizenship dysphoria.” No longer will an illegal alien have to show they have filed a Colorado tax return or lived here for at least two years. Now, an illegal alien can provide a “military identification document” from whatever country they claim to be from as long as it is not more than 10 years old — which we can confirm by accessing the non-existent global military database of all soldiers. 

Last year, Gonzales (and Weissman) helped eliminate the law that required “people currently experiencing immigration redefinition” from even having to swear that they have — or ever will — apply for legal status in America prior to taking our coveted in-state tuition or getting a driver’s license. That same comprehensive “Colorado hearts illegals” bill heightens the risk of dangerous future apprehensions by prohibiting ICE from arresting a “person without permission to be in the U.S.” upon their release from jail or at our courthouses after being sentenced for their crimes. Gonzales and Weissman’s bill also allows illegal aliens to attack past misdemeanor convictions that have impacted their immigration status. To permit illegal aliens to bond out their illegal amigos from our jails without risking apprehension, Gonzales also led the change in law to allow bond to be posted online. 

Colorado should not forget that Gonzales also led the effort to make the sentence for mass, serial, repeat and torture murderers the same as for a murderer of only one — by repealing the death penalty. 

Elections have consequences. Were these the consequences you voted for? 

George Brauchler is the 23rd Judicial District attorney and former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter